“Amplify: Make the Future of Europe Yours” main goal is to bring underrepresented voices in the cultural sector to the Conference. Across 12 EU countries (Hubs), Amplify has held participatory listening sessions which have gathered diverse groups of people within the cultural sector who face barriers to participation or access to EU decision-making processes in interactive and collaborative workshops. These sessions resulted in each country’s own set of recommendations and key focus areas for the Future of Europe.

This document synthesizes the contributions of each of the 12 Amplify Hubs, first by presenting diagnoses of the issues that project participants discussed as most affecting underrepresented communities across Europe. The following recommendations were developed to address these key focus areas. Also included in the full document are “Explanatory Notes,” which provide background information from the Amplify Hubs regarding how each recommendation was developed.

• Address the fatal combination of climate neglect and political inaction that endanger communities and their futures. Include arts and culture in combating the climate crisis.
• Guarantee the conditions for a dignified life. Disrupt logics of exploitation, precarity and marginalisation. Implement a pedagogy of the commons which includes experimental and collaborative practices in local communities. Create institutional guarantees so that the intersection of culture, community building, and wellbeing is at the heart of public policies.
• Reinforce community participation. EU institutions need to be updated, from being perceived as solely a funding opportunity to a framework that is meant to empower communities. Bottom-up and participatory processes are crucial for creating new management models of common goods.
• Promote systemic change by creating synergies across different sectors, providing training, and pooling resources and knowledge for trans-sectoral cooperation.
• Involve youth in long-term decision-making for the future of Europe. Reinforce youth councils by including young emerging artists. Develop opportunities that further involve them in EU governance processes.
• Include arts education in school curricula and educational institutions as it is vital for the eradication of social inequalities, racism, and discrimination and developing critical thinking.
• Redesign and rethink policies to fully support the development of cultural ecosystems that are diverse, communitarian and transversal. Cultural rights such as accessibility, participation, the right to creation, equal opportunities, fair working conditions, and decentralisation must inspire new legislative frameworks. These should secure real, active and direct participation and prioritise underrepresented communities.
• Activate creative, cultural and social processes in marginalised communities by pushing institutions to work more in these contexts. Use existing knowledge and practices rooted in the territories and foster intercultural learning.
• Decentralise EU funding opportunities by making them accessible and flexible to all. Make EU regional and municipal offices closer to people, especially in non-urban and peripheral territories, to help with project ideas, funding, and exchanges. Build capacity of the cultural sector on financial sustainability with additional training, professionalisation, and peer-learning.

Read the full Amplify Collective Recommendation here:

Press here for Amplify Collective Recommendation in French.